Finished the Armor, Moving onto the Weapon

I finished the armor modeling. However, I had a lot of geometry that I felt that I could remove. In the hard surface modeling tutorial I watched, support edge loops were used a majority of the time. These loops helped with telling 3ds Max that the edge between the other two was a hard edge. Although these loops helped initially, this model is for a game, and geometry is limited, so I looked up trying to use smoothing groups on the model to achieve the same look but with less geometry.

Video on using smoothing groups for exporting in Mudbox.

I managed to use smoothing groups effectively. I was able to export my file into Mudbox while keeping the hard surface look that normally would have been smoothed out. I was able to optimize my model. Below is a comparison. Utilizing smoothing groups, I was able to cut my poly count by roughly 2500 while having little to no change in appearance.

Updated model: 3275 polygons (Smoothing groups) (Top)

Previous model: 5792 poly(Edge loops) (Bottom)